There's No Such Thing As Monsters

A/N: The spells (not the counter-curses) that Dean uses in this chapter are real spells, though I may have tweaked parts of them or left bits out to make them fit a bit better. As always, I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of this :)

Chapter Four

Witches. Dean hated witches.

He'd hated them even before one of them put the whammy on Sam. They were gross and nasty and creepy, and you couldn't even kill them because technically they were human, even if they had sold their souls to demons.

Even if he left out all of those perfectly acceptable reasons, Dean would have felt justified in his hatred purely because his motel room now smelt like a freaking New Age store, wax and incense, and who knew how long it would take to get that flowery scent out of his clothes.

Worse than that though, Sam hadn't woken up in over 24 hours and it was starting to seem as though Dean was destined to burn the place down before he found something that worked.

Bobby had managed to come up with five counter-curses, three he was doubtful about, and Dad's journal held two, but none of them had done anything other than stink up the place. Sam stayed asleep, unnaturally so. Sam was a restless sleeper, always had been. He twisted and turned, tangled himself in bedsheets, had nightmares and screamed. Sleeping in the same bed with him when they were young and Dad was too broke to pay for something adequate had always been rough. Sharing the back seat of the Impala was worse. But now Sam was still, motionless, in some sort of supernatural coma.

Dean was getting sick of singeing his fingertips, and the carpet looked like the herbs and spices section of the supermarket had thrown up on it. He definitely wasn't cut out for witchcraft.

"Don't you worry, Sammy. I've still got some tricks up my sleeve," he muttered absently as he rearranged the candles.

With no counter-curses left to try, Dean was kind of improvising but hey, that was what he did best, and maybe it was just a simple spell anyway. Maybe he was over-complicating things.

He didn't have a cauldron – why the fuck would he have a cauldron? - but he'd found a rusty old pot under the sink in the kitchenette. The bottom was so burnt that it looked like it might eventually just crumble into ash but it would do. He was just lucky that Sam was into seances and such on occasion (of course Sam was into it. Sam was into everything. Kid was freaky smart), if the job called for it, so the Impala's trunk was stocked with pretty much everything else he needed. He made a mental note not to bug Sam about it being a waste of space, even if he preferred the 'guns blazing' route.

The candles were starting to burn low now but they would probably last. The lambs blood he'd needed for one of Dad's counter-curses had been more of a mission because he hadn't wanted to leave Sam, but after a few moments standing around helplessly he'd conceded that it probably wasn't going to magically materialize in the motel room (although stranger things had happened – just never to their good fortune). Leaving Sam with strict orders to keep breathing and maybe wake up if he felt so inclined, Dean had rushed to the local butchers and fed the perplexed shop keep a lame story about a little brother needing it for a science project. He shouldn't have bothered really, because, of course, the curse-breaker was a dud.

Moving on from the counter-curses, Dean flicked through Dad's journal until he found the ancient Egyptian recipe he was looking for.

"You a secret witch, Sammy?" he asked idly as he mixed together an oil of equal parts frankincense, musk and sandalwood. "Why else would you insist on dragging all this stuff around with us?"

Despite what logic told him, Dean was still holding some vague hope for an answer (as if it would be that simple for them). It was too quiet when he didn't talk. Sam hadn't said anything since he'd murmured Dean's name and something about monsters not being real. Which didn't make sense because, well, duh, of course monsters were real. He'd spent some time trying to figure out if there was a clue in there but if there was, it was bloody cryptic. More likely it was just the nonsensical rambling of the bewitched.

Dean lit the frankincense and myrrh incense and held it dumbly for a moment. According to the journal, he was supposed to pass the object he wanted cleansed and consecrated through the smoke. A note in the margin assured him that the quick ritual could be used on a person but damned if he could figure out how to hold Sam over the incense. He settled for waving it around his motionless brother, getting as much of the smoke to curl over Sam's skin as possible. That done, he picked up the oil he'd made and anointed Sam with it.

Jesus, anointed. That made it sound far more holy than the simple act of clucking some oil onto his brother had any right to.

That was it. Those ancient Egyptians sure knew how to keep their witchcraft short and sweet. Dean waited. Sam breathed in and out. The only reaction Dean got was a slight crinkling of Sam's nose, as if the smell of the oils and incense were irritating him.

Well, Dean supposed that was something. At least Sam was vaguely reacting, right? Okay, so it was still a long way from actually waking up but...

Dean sighed. But nothing. Moving on.

Kneeling on the bed and tugging Sam's shirt up, Dean produced a marker and carefully drew a banishing pentagram over Sam's chest. Simple but often effective (so he was told) in getting rid of unwanted energies.

Not this time though.

"Damn it, Sam," Dean muttered. "Sometimes I really think the universe is out to get you."

Abandoning the bed, Dean grabbed a bottle of vinegar from the table.

"This is kind of weird," he informed his unconscious brother, "But Dad's journal says that in folk magick, vinegar can be used to banish stuff like curses, dunno why – you probably would, wouldn't you, ya walking encyclopedia – so..."

He eyed the bottle doubtfully, then shrugged and tilted it over Sam. The vinegar sloshed out, soaking Sam's shirt, his jeans, his hair. Dean even tipped some carefully into Sam's mouth, just to be thorough (totally not because he got some sort of big brother kick out of force-feeding his little brother vinegar). Sam choked slightly, face twisting at the taste, and shivered at the sudden dampness, but didn't wake.

Tossing the empty bottle aside, Dean turned widdershins until he was dizzy, feeling like an idiot. Why couldn't they just say counter-clockwise like normal people? And seriously, how was spinning in circles meant to banish anything?

He burnt sage and wafted the smoke around the room and over Sam, feeling like he was really grasping at straws now (maybe because he was really grasping at straws now). Sage smoke was supposed to cleanse stuff; energy and thoughts, the 'aura' and all that hippy jazz, so the likelihood of it waking someone from some sort of supernatural coma was... well, it wasn't very likely.

"You so owe me for all this," Dean grumbled as Sam stubbornly slept on.

Back to Dad's journal.

"There must be something else I can try," he murmured to himself, flipping through pages on restless spirits and summonings. He really wished Dad had kept the thing in some sort of decent order, or maybe made an index at the back or something, but no, Wendigo's were jammed in next to scribblings about water sprites, a tattered newspaper article about some mysterious deaths taped on top of some old Indian fable. How did Dad ever find anything?

Not that Dad would ever need to find anything in the journal aga-

There. A list caught his eye before his morose train of thought could go any further. About halfway through the journal, crammed down at the bottom of a page mostly taken up by a rough drawing of what might have been a Black Dog, was a list of ingredients for a spell bag aimed at neutralizing bad intentions and actions.

If Sam had caught the eye of a witch and it was a simple spell rather than a curse, it should do the trick. Maybe Dean was thinking too big. Curses tended to be complicated, taking time and a lot of ingredients and equipment. A spell would have been the easier option.

Dean had never quite figured out how simple herbs and such-like could hold so much magick. Sure, Sam would ramble on about things growing in the earth and the supposed power of Mother Nature – yes, he actually said Mother Nature. Dean had had a field day – and everything being connected or entwined in some quantum reality or some sort of crap, but to Dean? Well, to Dean they were just dead plants really.

Like, how was garlic powder supposed to help? And Rue; there was some scribble next to it but it was so sloppy that all Dean could make out was something about it being a traditional Mayan remedy for Envidia, whatever that was.

The Witch Hazel leaves and twigs at least sounded fitting for casting a spell, but charcoal powder? That wasn't even a herb. Why the hell did Sam keep all these things anyway?

Dean wasted a decent amount of time searching through Sam's collection of rocks for a Royal Azel Stone, before checking Dad's notes again and realizing that it was the same thing as Sugilite, and then he had to sacrifice a perfectly good red t-shirt to make a red bag like the spell demanded. Not that he ever actually wore the t-shirt and he thought it might have originally been Sam's anyway, but he kept it around for when they were overdue on going to the laundromat or their monster of the week shredded his last decent shirt and it had saved him from walking around half naked a couple of times.

Now he had to bury it, which of course meant leaving the motel room, which meant leaving Sam, which meant he wasn't too thrilled with the idea.

Dean stood over Sam's bed uncertainly, spell bag in hand.

"Okay, kiddo, I gotta go bury this sucker. You better be awake when I get back 'cause I'm running out of ideas here."

He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, wondering if he should clean Sam up before he left. Poor kid was covered in vinegar and oil, with a pentagram drawn on his chest, his hair clinging to his forehead damply, and if this went on much longer they were getting dangerously close to sponge bath territory and that was some awkwardness he hoped to avoid. At least Sam had only pissed himself once – and that was kind of a good thing because it meant he wasn't dehydrated – and Dean had had the foresight to be prepared, seeing as he had far too much experience in the caring-for-little-brother-post-hunt-gone-wrong department.

Anyway, it would be a hell of a way to wake up, if the bag worked as soon as Dean buried it. Alone in a room that looked like a coven of witches had been having some kind of spell-filled orgy.

Dean settled with a note, quickly scrawling 'Don't freak out. Be back soon' and leaving it on the night-stand.

Then he was out the door, after carefully checking the salt lines and the wards they always put up, locking it behind him. It didn't make him feel much better about leaving Sam alone and completely defenceless.

It was a bit of a walk – far longer than Dean wanted it to be – trying to find somewhere that wasn't concrete or the potted plants outside the motel. He had a feeling that burying the bag in a tub would be cheating. Sam would probably say something about how it had to find roots and connect with the earth's core or some other gibberish, so Dean walked until he found a small park, about 15 minutes away from the motel, trying hard not to think about how every step took him further away from Sam or imagine all the things that could happen in the time he was gone. If Sam stopped breathing there would be no one to -

Focus. The faster he got his done, the faster he could get back to Sam and hopefully Sam would be awake and then he could take care of his breathing himself.

Thankfully, there weren't too many parents hanging around to wonder what he was up to and the two women who were there seemed too caught up in chatting over their take-away coffees and keeping an eye on the three children, two boys and a girl, who seemed to be having some sort of argument over the slide.

Digging a small hole in the grass and dropping the bag in, Dean wondered whether a crossroads would be more appropriate but the spell hadn't specified and they always specified if it was important so he figured any old dirt would do.

Bag buried, Dean did his best to nonchalantly amble his way out of the park, past the distracted parents, but as soon as he was out of view he broke into a run, dodging pedestrians as he flashed past store fronts, feet smacking against the pavement.

He imagined Sam, sitting bolt upright as the last of the dirt covered the bag, dark eyes searching for Dean, greeted by the scent of vinegar and frankincense and sage. Finding the note on the bedside table and hopefully obeying the written order, trusting Dean's words. Sam not freaking out, quick eyes darting around the room, the herbs spilled on the floor and table, Dad's journal open on the page with the spell bag ingredients, the ruined red shirt. Trying to add up the pieces and put together some semblance of an idea about what happened while he waits for Dean to appear and explain.

Maybe Sam would be in the shower when Dean got back, washing all the gunk off, or sitting at the table, inspecting the spell Dean had used, or -

Dean skidded to a halt by the motel room door, yanking the key from his pocket and shoving it in the lock. He flung the door open.

Or lying on the bed, exactly where Dean had left him.

Breathing heavily, Dean sunk down on his own bed, gazing helplessly at Sam.

Maybe one of the spells or counter-curses would take effect at midnight, or 3AM, the witching hour. That was possible. Maybe they just needed some time to start working.

Dean swiped his hands down his face. Or maybe they just wouldn't work at all.

To Be Continued...